Purdue, IU challenging young players after 0-2 starts

Purdue head coach Matt Painter greets iU head coach Tom Crean before the game. This marks their first meeting as head coaches. The IU mens basketball team traveled to West Lafayette to take on Purdue at Mackey Arena Saturday, Feb 21, 2009. (Sam Riche / The Indianapolis Star) &lt;b&gt;02/04/2012 - C01 - MAIN - 2ND - THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;(Photo: Sam Riche)

Like his counterpart in Bloomington last weekend, Matt Painter issued a direct challenge to his sophomores Monday in the face of the Purdue men basketball team’s 0-2 start to Big Ten play.

Indiana coach Tom Crean, speaking following his own team’s second conference loss in as many tries, said IU needs and expects more from its sophomore class.

While Painter wasn’t so age-specific, his choice of words conveyed frustration with his own second-year players.

“We need to start showing some basketball maturity,” Painter said, pointing out than many of his sophomores played too many minutes as freshmen to be considered inexperienced anymore.

Purdue fell 82-79 to Minnesota on Sunday because, Painter said, of “ill-advised” shot selection and lapses on defense, especially around the rim.

Hoosier back on the court

With a full week off between Michigan State and Penn State, Crean elected to send his team back to the practice court Sunday. Film study, he said, will wait until later in the week.

Reviewing the Michigan State loss, Crean said he felt Indiana made too many fundamental and systemic mistakes. Indiana’s offensive execution, particularly with regard to screening, bothered Crean, and he said he felt it more beneficial to fix those technical problems right away.

“You’ve got to get a toughness and a level of basketball IQ that matchup because that’s what the best teams have,” Crean said.

Indiana will play against at noon Saturday in State College.

McCaffrey’s double technical

Iowa coach Fran McCaffrey apologized for his double technical and ejection Sunday at Wisconsin, saying he failed to exercise the same self-awareness and control he demands from his players.

McCaffrey, noted for his intense and sometimes volatile sideline demeanor, was hit with two technicals at once with just under 12 minutes left in Iowa’s 75-71 loss in Madison. Admitting that he expected the first technical foul, McCaffrey said he needed to exercise more restraint than he did from that point.

“You’ve got to be able to assess things that happen. That’s what you ask your players to do. You’ve got to be able to do that yourself,” McCaffrey said. “I didn’t put our team in a position that benefited them. … I regret that.”

He apologized for the incident in a statement released Monday morning.

Top-five showdown

The Big Ten’s first marquee matchup of the year arrives this week as No. 3 Ohio State (15-0) travels to No. 5 Michigan State (13-1) for a 9 p.m. Tuesday tip.

Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said he believes last year’s game against Indiana and this one upcoming are the only two top-five match-ups in the history of the Breslin Center in East Lansing.

Still, he said he’s being careful not to make Tuesday’s game too important.

“You don’t want it to be the biggest game of the year,” Izzo said. “There are always gonna be big games.”

Ohio State coach Thad Matta called the Spartans a “typical, great Michigan State team.”

“You have to play great basketball across the board to beat them,” Matta said.